Another one - very close to home
Adventures of a Fortysomething: Life Cut Short
When a life ends too soon, is it chance or the choices we make?
Jeanne Faulkner is a freelance writer and registered nurse in Portland, Ore. Her work appears regularly in Pregnancy and Fit Pregnancy, and she has contributed articles to the Oregonian, Better Homes & Gardens, Shape and other publications.
Let's try a little experiment. Go into the room you live in most. Maybe that's your kitchen, office or bedroom. Turn on the light and take a look around. What's in there that represents your life? Are there pictures of your family? Leftover crusts from breakfast? A stack of mail and newspapers? How about that noodle-necklace your daughter made for you? Your son's muddy cleats? Dirty laundry on the floor? Now turn off the light.
A friend of mine went out shopping recently and never came home. She was young by anyone's standards, physically fit and generally healthy. She had a massive heart attack and died. Just died. There was nothing the paramedics could do to save her. She left a family struggling to understand what the heck just happened to their world. Her children had waved goodbye from the couch and never saw her again. Done. Her light just switched off.
A young couple, married just a few years, ended up separating when their individual personalities and lifestyles proved too incompatible. He was young and carefree. She was intensely organized and focused on the future. He wanted to play. She wanted to work. They drove each other crazy. Then, one day, the phone rang. His middle-aged father had suffered a stroke and was severely disabled. The son settled in at his father's side, and during the course of a few brief but difficult months, he grew up. The young woman visited her husband often, helping with her father-in-law's care, but she took care of her husband, too. And she realized that life was fragile. It could be over in a heartbeat. Maybe a little playtime was important.
Overweight, exhausted and out of shape, the older parents of a preschooler sat down with their lawyer to draft their wills. Who would take care of their daughter if anything happened? It was unthinkable, but they knew they should plan for it. Just in case. Later that week, the mother visited her doctor, who informed her that her blood pressure was off the charts, likely due to her obesity and sedentary lifestyle. He recommended she lose at least 50 pounds and start exercising immediately. He wrote a prescription for blood pressure medication, and she took it to the pharmacy to fill. She grabbed a bag of Doritos and a Snickers bar at the cash register.
His mother died of a heart attack when he was 14. His father died of a stroke when he was 17. At 26 years of age, the young man had been without family for nine years--no siblings, grandparents, aunts or uncles. Heart disease ran rampant in his family, and no one was left except him and his soon-to-be-born baby. He was happy it was a boy because he didn't want his family name to end with him. He ran five miles every day, ate a strict vegetarian diet and never smoked or did drugs, like many of his college-mates had. The tattoo on his shoulder says, "Life's short. Live well."
An old man's funeral was attended by his many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They told stories of his wonderful life: flying the early planes, sport fishing for the big ones. He'd lived at the beach and in the mountains. He had traveled, done important work and still had friends he'd vacationed with for 60 years. Sure, he'd been wild in his younger years; wilder still in his retirement. He could have bought himself a few more years if he'd toned down that wild streak. Still, it had been a wonderful life. He'd followed the basic rules: eat right, exercise often, rest when you need to, do work you like, take care of your loved ones and go out to play.
What will happen when your light is switched off? No one knows when the bulb will burn out. We don't really know if a high-watt bulb burns that much faster than a low-watt bulb, or if it necessarily matters that the wiring's faulty. No one wants to think about the darkness, or about the lives left in the shadows by our absence. But we do know that a life well lived, which follows the basic rules, tends to cast a wide and brilliant glow that brightens the lives of many.
The rules aren't that hard to follow, and yet so many people think
they can short circuit a few and it won't really matter. Others follow
all the rules and burn out too soon anyway. But the odds are greater
for a long, healthy life if the wiring and plumbing are kept in good
working order. Random chance and family genetics play a part, but when
you take care of yourself, your light is more likely to continue to
burn brightly.
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